It's a funny masquerade
of patterns that float in Santa Ana breezes.
You couldn't tell, today, that just last week
the landscape was an asphalt floodplain.
Clothes on the line and exhibition games
of baseball on too many days off
in between shifts is my normal.
When I heard the bard say twenty years
of schoolin' and they put you on the day shift
I thought it was the Truth, but I never imagined
what he was saying would be true for me.
When I was just a child, maybe
I didn't have much imagination, not a clue
what my future would be; all I had
was a desperate drive. I did not know
I was racing forward, towards death
with such abandon, not knowing how I would wish
I could slow down, linger and savor my twenties.
I am not yet a man, though I ought to be.
Perhaps that is the point.
Maybe the clothes should sway a while longer,
the baseball season should never start
and my time between shifts ought to be long, droll
and filled with echoes.
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